67Cu Production Capabilities: A Mini Review

Abstract

Is the ⁶⁷Cu production worldwide feasible for expanding preclinical and clinical studies? How can we face the ingrowing demands of this emerging and promising theranostic radionuclide for personalized therapies? This review looks at the different production routes, including the accelerator- and reactor-based ones, providing a comprehensive overview of the actual ⁶⁷Cu supply, with brief insight into its use in non-clinical and clinical studies. In addition to the most often explored nuclear reactions, this work focuses on the ⁶⁷Cu separation and purification techniques, as well as the target material recovery procedures that are mandatory for the economic sustainability of the production cycle. The quality aspects, such as radiochemical, chemical, and radionuclidic purity, with particular attention to the coproduction of the counterpart ⁶⁴Cu, are also taken into account, with detailed comparisons among the different production routes. Future possibilities related to new infrastructures are included in this work, as well as new developments on the radiopharmaceuticals aspects.

Keywords: Cu-67; copper radionuclides production; radiopharmaceuticals; theranostics.

Figure 1

Plot of the nuclear cross section ratio for the production of ⁶⁷Cu and ⁶⁴Cu radionuclides: the continuous line is the IAEA recommended value for ⁶⁸Zn targets; the dashed line refers to the measured values for ⁷⁰Zn targets. The vertical dashed lines refer to the favorable energy range for ⁶⁷Cu production. A scheme of the multi-layer target configuration described in the international INFN patent is shown at the bottom [21].